Helen Levitt practiced photography with a small handheld camera on the streets of New York, making tender depictions of ordinary city people, and especially children. The street was a stage for her young subjects, upon which they played games, performed improvisational dramas, and made fantastic, untutored chalk drawings such as this figure with double pupils and a hovering crown. For Levitt, graffiti and children’s drawings were present-day emblems of a pre-civilized, magical art, both spontaneous and archetypal.